


A New Level of Understanding

by Merfilly



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Community: spook_me, Creepy, Gen, Horror, Mad Scientists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-26
Updated: 2011-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:43:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wheeljack strikes on the perfect solution to understanding the human condition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Level of Understanding

**Author's Note:**

> Please bear in mind that this fic is intended for a Halloween fic-fest, and may be quite disturbing in content to some. If you wish to know the exact nature of creepiness, please email me at merfilly@gmail.com for warnings.
> 
> Inspired by this: http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab353/spook_me/Spook%20Me%20Science%20Fiction%20Covers/SpookMe14.jpg

The inspiration came in the middle of a night when thunder was rumbling outside and the power grid was threatened by excessive strikes from the electrical imbalance of the atmosphere. Maybe it was a subconscious reaction to the most recent movie night, when the twins had played three 'classics' from a studio called Universal. Maybe it was just the way Wheeljack's processors worked when he was overloaded on his own contraband high-grade. Either way, he knew he was a genius for it, and quickly started hashing out the principles that had erupted in his processors as the charge was wearing off.

There were plenty of samples of human DNA to begin with. He had been enjoying the process of decoding the relatively simplistic double helix, with his repetition in varied combinations of just a few proteins. It had amused him to discover his friends broke down to a code that was not much more than the root binary of his own kind. Surely, easily, he could duplicate this process and have a way of finally interacting with the tiny, fascinating beings on a level that would bring him more understanding! If could experience life at their level, could he not then begin fixing all their design defects?

Of course he could!

With no more thought than knowing he could prevent Carly's telomeres from shearing off further, he threw himself into the lab, its locks activating immediately, as this project needed all his attention.

`~`~`~`~`

"Anyone seen Wheeljack?" Carly asked. The last time she remembered seeing him was movie night nearly a month before.

"Lab's locked," Perceptor offered her. "Something big. Prime's skipped calling him out for the last two fights because of it."

Carly nodded. "I wonder what it is?" She thought she heard motion, but honestly, that lab had been designed to be proof against sound, light, and explosion.

"Until those locks come off, we won't know," Ratchet decreed, before adjusting Sideswipe's arm, glaring balefully at his patient until the frontliner stopped protesting on private comms. Carly climbed up to watch that, always fascinated by how easily her friends could replace their parts. Her eyes darted over to the locked lab, curious, but not willing to breach Wheeljack's privacy.

Yet.

`~`~`~`~`

"Shouldn't he be out by now?"

Carly's question made Ratchet frown, and look toward the locked lab. Three human months was a bit excessive. He pulled up his records of energy use on that room; the dispenser had been untouched for one of those. That wasn't too excessive; Wheeljack was habitually pouring cube and forgetting to finish them off, so one month subsisting on leftovers made sense.

"Maybe you're right," the CMO said. He moved over to the door, Carly quickly at his side, and overrode the locks with his medical passcode.

The first thing either one noted was the thrum of the ventilators working over time. They were programmed to kick on when the olfactory reading exceeded a human's tolerance level. Given Wheeljack's propensity for noxious chemicals, that was not the surprising thing. It was Carly, however, that saw the thing at the door that had once been a human-shaped being, maybe even a woman, curled in an almost fetal position at the door.

She did what any human might and screamed a little.

Ratchet gasped upon noting the thing, running a passive scan over it. "The cells ran out of fuel," he said sadly. "Wheeljack?"

Carly swallowed hard, noting the nodes for data cables built into the … body's temples. She let Ratchet pick her up, and they proceeded past the obscuring equipment racks to find the strangely quiet Wheeljack.

"Odd…" Ratchet commented, running a scan over the engineer. "Stasis lock." There were cable dangling, cables with tiny plugs, that looked like they would match the data-ports in the body. Carly went stiff and prayed she was wrong.

"Check his notes, Ratchet. Oh please let me be wrong…."

Her voice trailed off as the CMO moved, pulling up the program notes. "PRIMUS!" the medic roared as he made sense of the garbled glyphs.

"Ratchet?" Carly asked in a quiet, scared voice.

"Got it in his fool processor to try and…" Ratchet made an audible swallowing noise, helm turning back to see that pitiful wreck of an experiment, then over to the quiescent engineer.

Carly curled in his hand, shuddering. "Understand us… only he got trapped, and there wasn't any way out or food…"

Human and mech clung to each other, even as Ratchet hurried to get them out of there, away from the wreck of science turned horrific.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Better Level of Understanding](https://archiveofourown.org/works/321954) by [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly)




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